Ten Days with the Highlander

by Hayson Manning

• ISBN10: 1973904748
• ISBN13: 9781973904748
• Publish Date: 24 July 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 190
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

American corporate lady tries to convince Scottish B&B owner to franchise his hotel. The story was quite cute, but I would have preferred a HFN rather than the intense HEA we got. I find it rather weird how easily they decided they loved each other and belonged together after about six days. It was all a bit much and over-dramatic for my taste.

Spoiler for the resolution of the story: I dislike how often romance heroines just instantly give up their entire careers for the hero - in this case after just one week! The heroine becomes the barmaid in Callum's pub; this all seems a bit too effortless for someone so ambitious. It would have been much more suitable for her to find a compromise between her career and her love life, rather than just quitting on the spot. It didn't seem right.

[EBookObsessed]

A cute novella. Great characters. Some plot issues.

This is a 192 page novella and we don’t waste too much time with background of our main characters, except brief notes here and here. I really enjoyed how Georgia and Callum played off each other. For the most part, they were sweet and playful. Even the secondary characters make a decent showing even without too much depth of character. Like actors, these characters did their best to be likable and try to give a depth of presence. So the characters themselves made the romance as long as you didn’t get too caught in many of the plot issues that didn’t make much sense to me.

Georgia represents a travel company? and she was sent to Callum’s hotel to buy it? but he was going to run it? We don’t waste too much time for details of what kind of company it is except that they would be bringing tourists and Georgia had to find things for the tourists to do in this small town on the butt end of Scotland. We also know that Georgia’s company wanted to make all the rooms smaller in Callum’s Inn and double the amount to a whopping eight, yes eight, rooms. As Georgia was the only one staying there for her ten days, there really isn’t a rush on this very sleepy town with no wifi and shitty cell service. Let’s start with the fact that she is approaching a man who is refurbishing the grandeur of what is, at best, a bed and breakfast. If you are going to cut these rooms in half, and put in a bathroom for each room, they will the size of a roomy closet. I would have found it more believable if Georgia was secretly there to scout out another building for the company to take over and create a lavish hotel for their special travel guests.

Callum tells her from the beginning that he has no interest in selling to her or having her travel company come and invade their town with rotten tourists. Yet she constantly believes that once she can sit Callum down to see her presentation, he will jump at the chance to sign up. But Callum also owns the local pub (which he has also refurbished) and when he isn’t taking care of his one guest, he is over there serving drinks and making sure everything is taken care of. So Callum doesn’t get back to the Inn until wee hours of the morning and he is too tired for her presentation.

When he does have free time, he decides to show Georgia the highlights of their little town, which she loves and takes pictures of for her brochure, while Callum points out how tourists will trample on and destroy the landscape and take advantage of the gullible and friendly locals.

Georgia also comes to town with no idea of the weather. She does’t have decent clothes for hiking the landscape and for being out in the cold and wet. I have no idea how she became the heavy hitter for this company in charge of closing deals and setting up travel package. She seems a little too flighty.

Two things that did annoy me: one, Georgia is driving out of town to find some other town that would appreciate what she could bring to them and she crashes her car avoiding farm animals in the road. She has no signal so she has to walk all the way back to town in the dark and cold rain and everyone is frantic that she disappeared. BUT…once Georgia left the town, she got a signal and was talking to her BFF in America about her relationship with Callum. Then she lost the signal and shortly thereafter, she crashed her car. So…she just lost the signal, shouldn’t she have just walked about 100 feet down the road back the way she came, and been able to call Callum to come help her? Her phone didn’t die. She lost signal. The signal should have still be available when she walked back.

Number two, Callum is showing Georgia around town and the fae grove where couples drink from a special fae well and do a little ceremony and are thereafter married by the fae. This is one of those sacred local traditions and all the locals who did this are still married, yada, yada, and it is so sacred that Callum performs the ritual with Georgia while she is having fun taking her promo pictures. Later in the story, Callum is thinking about how he will one day do this with someone special and realizes that he ruined the special moment by doing it as part of Georgia’s promos. In fact, it is so special, that the whole town keeps asking when the actual wedding is. So if this was so sacred a marriage tradition, why would Callum do it with Georgia with no hesitation. She didn’t sweet talk or seduce him into it. She’s just “let’s do it.”

I know I am asking a lot of my $.99 find, but the characters were sweet and even the secondary characters were kookie and nice. Georgia was bubbly and kind and her pushing her tourist trap crap was very ham-handed and very out of character.

Sadly, with a little tweaking it could have been a better story and is just a waste of good characters when it doesn’t flow right.

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